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From BigThink: * * * For a sample of related Situationist posts, see “Jock or Nerd? Where Did You Sit at the Dinner Table?,” “The Situation of Handguns on Urban Streets-Abstract,” and “Black History is Now.”

Gina Stepp of Vision has an interesting piece on recent findings that suggest children in the U.S. and other countries are increasingly struggling with anxiety and unhappiness. Below we excerpt a portion of her piece. * * * In the year 2000—even before terrorism hit so close to home for Americans on September 11, 2001, […]

They’re the kids who every parent loves to hate. The childhood delinquents. The ones whom you hope your kids never start hanging out with, much less become. For whatever reason, they fell through the cracks and and seem destined for tribulation. They do poorly in school, get into fights, shirk the rules, and end up […]

On April 13, 2013 the Project on Law and Mind Sciences and the National Lawyers Guild are co-hosting a conference titled “Deep Capture: Psychology, Public Relations, Democracy, and Law” at Harvard Law School. Details here. Here is the information about our speakers: Noam Chomsky is the Institute Professor in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy […]

On April 13, 2013 the Project on Law and Mind Sciences and the National Lawyers Guild are co-hosting a conference titled “Deep Capture: Psychology, Public Relations, Democracy, and Law” at Harvard Law School. For more information, visit the conference website here. Here’s a draft of the day’s schedule. Tentative Schedule 9:30 am – Coffee, tea, […]

Part 2 of the BBC’s Remarkable Three-Part Series “The Men Who Made Us Fat”: Jacques Peretti investigates how the concept of ‘supersizing’ changed our eating habits forever. How did we – once a nation of moderate eaters – start to want more? Speaking to Mike Donahue, former McDonalds Vice President, Peretti explores the history behind […]

From Springer: Positive social relationships in childhood and adolescence are key to adult well-being, according to Associate Professor Craig Olsson from Deakin University and the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute in Australia, and his colleagues. In contrast, academic achievement appears to have little effect on adult well-being. The exploratory work, looking at the child and adolescent […]

From WKU Public Radio: WKU Psychology professor Sam McFarland has long been fascinated by individuals who put their lives–and the lives of loved ones–at risk in order to save people of a different race, ethnicity, or religious group. Dr. McFarland has an article that’s set to be published in a social psychology journal called “All […]

From Huffington Post and Cornell Sun (By Sebastian Deri): As someone who was better at English and history than math and science in high school, what I chose to study in college was partly an effort to shy away from the latter fields and take refuge in “softer” subjects. “Leave the questions of science to […]

1. “Life at the Top: Evidence on Elite Leaders and Stress Hormone Secretion” Jennifer Lerner, HKS Monday, 3/5, 12 p.m. Wasserstein 1023 Chinese food will be served! Dr. Lerner’s presentation will address her latest research into the relationship between stress and leadership. Leadership is widely believed to be associated with elevated stress. But if leadership […]

From Harvard Gazette: Nancy Gertner is a former federal judge, the author of a recent memoir (“In Defense of Women”), a professor of practice at Harvard Law School, and an authority on sentencing, jury system discrimination, forensic evidence, and other legal areas. But go back to June 1971, the month she had a loud argument […]

A former student of mine, Brett Murphy, has co-authored a fascinating and sophisticated paper on the roots of psychopathy, which you can download on SSRN. Here’s the abstract. “Psychopathy” is a psychopathological construct involving a diverse set of affective deficits and behavioral disinhibitions that result in substantial antisocial behavior, and includes traits such as extreme […]

Professor Caroline Forell has written a wonderfully thoughtful, situationist article, titled “McTorts: The Social and Legal Impact of McDonald’s Role in Tort Suits (forthcoming in Volume 24 of the Loyola Consumer Law Review) on SSRN. Here’s the abstract. * * * McDonald’s is everywhere. With more than 32,000 restaurants around the world, its Golden Arches […]

We are thrilled to introduce a new Situationist Contributor, Dr. Thomas Blass. Thomas Blass is an internationally acclaimed social psychologist and the recognized expert on obedience to authority as well as, more broadly, the research and legacy of Stanley Milgram. A Holocaust survivor born in Budapest, Hungary during World War II, Dr. Blass was a […]

In 2010, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced the launch of the “Defending Childhood” initiative to help prevent children’s and young people’s exposure to violence, mitigate its effects and put an end to cycles of violence that undermine the public’s health. During this webcast, he described his vision for this initiative and its progress so […]

Francesca Gino and Sreedhari Desai recently posted their paper, “Memory Lane and Morality: How Childhood Memories Promote Prosocial Behavior” on SSRN. Here’s the abstract. * * * Four experiments demonstrated that recalling memories from one’s own childhood lead people to experience feelings of moral purity and to behave prosocially. In Experiment 1, participants instructed to […]

Over at the new Law & Mind Blog, several Harvard Law students have been blogging about about system justification theory. Here is one of those posts, written by first -year student Marty Ehlenbach. Yale Law Professor Amy Chua’s recently published book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother has become a seemingly endless source of fodder […]

Over at the new Law & Mind Blog, a group of Harvard Law students is writing a series of posts reviewing other mind-science blogs. Each post provides a summary of several blogs and features one that the author finds especially valuable. Here’s Part 2 of that series (authored by second-year student Jeremy Troxel). * * […]

Below, we’ve posted titles and a brief quotation from some of our favorite non-Situationist situationist blogging during October 2010 (they are listed in alphabetical order by source). * * * From BPS Research Digest: “Don’t touch! On the mixed effects of avoidant instructions” “What happens if you tell a golfer not to over-shoot a putt? […]